


My Empire of Dirt

by waldorph



Category: Star Trek (2009), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mind Meld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-04
Updated: 2010-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-12 10:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/123761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph/pseuds/waldorph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He remembers fucking everything. Tries to kill it away but--well. Time's a tricky little fucker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Empire of Dirt

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt: _STXI - Hurt as done by Johnny Cash as inspiration._

He remembers everything.

* * *

Everyone goes away in the end.

Fact of life, you leave or you get left. Death is just the most ostentatious way of doing it, but everyone leaves. Or get left. Everything goes away in the end. Things change, exist only in the memories of the people who saw them and then imperfectly. Some qualities get forgotten and some qualities get exaggerated.

If you die young enough, you lose all your bad qualities and you get martyred. Even if you die in the middle of your sins, surrounded and bathed and dressed in them, if you're young enough, pretty enough, you're martyred.

He will be.

* * *

He has things. A house (unlived in), a name (none of them his originally), people who look up to him and love him and family. Good things. Important things, when you're tallying up the measure of a man.

He has skeletons in the closet and buried out back, telltale hearts beating under floorboards.

He has blood on his hands and in his mouth.

He is not a good man, and what he can't endure he destroys. His grandmother said he had a brown thumb, that plants died underneath his touch.

He doesn't think they did, actually, that's stupid. But it fits, as a metaphor, the way things sometimes do.

Midas had a hand of gold and it killed everything.

He's not Midas, but he can kill everything.

* * *

He was born when his mother tripped over a pig. It's her favorite story to tell, laughing around the table, and he's endured it for years, shaking his head and trying not to be embarrassed, but it makes her laugh so hard tears stream down her face and his father will slam the table, gasping for breath, and he can't actually begrudge them this.

The measure of a man is how well he takes a joke made at his own expense.

* * *

He remembers fucking everything. Tries to kill it away but--well. Time's a tricky little fucker.

* * *

He has a son. Carol didn't tell him about David, but he's there, and perfect, tall and golden-haired and brilliant and then cold, dead at the hand of Klingons.

His boy.

His beautiful boy. He could have been a great parent, and he was never given the chance to see if he could have made up for lost time.

Crew is family, and he's been father to so many, but they grow up and leave and they never write, never call.

Sometimes everything feels very empty.

* * *

Spock doesn't remember him, not really. None of them, but he will. Said Jim's name before he remembered his own and that means something, mind put back into body, housed in McCoy--bound to be some tarnish. Some trauma. Bones' head is a scary place for Bones, let alone Spock's katra.

Amanda smiles and squeezes Jim's hand, tells him that it will take some time, that his logical mind is settled but his human mind is still acclimating. Remembering how to function.

Jim can wait. Some things are worth waiting for.

* * *

Carol got an abortion. He held her hand and she said, "I can't have a kid right now, neither one of us can."

They broke up after that, and Carol moved away to school, and Jim stayed.

Jim uses protection. He'd be a fucking shitty parent, but after Carol it's paranoia.

* * *

You see how complicated this gets?

* * *

"What year were you born?"

"2233."

"What day?"

"March 22, why?"

"How old are you?"

"...35."

_  
two minutes later   
_

"What year were you born?"

"2233."

"What day?"

"March 22."

"How old are you?"

"23."

_  
outside   
_

"I can't tell if he's fucking with us or not."

* * *

He gets the _Enterprise_ when he's 30. His hair is beginning to thin and he's thicker around the middle but he's earned it, and Spock stays on and they're fast friends, best friends.

Improbable, but they go on to do great things, and the mistakes they make are forgivable.

He saves species and planets and cheats death. It's _fun_ , it's all fun.

Even the parts that aren't fun they can laugh at after. Nothing sticks to them.

* * *

Sam's dead (dead, Jim), splayed on the floor, built and carbon copy of Jim, only gray at the temples and with an awful mustache.

That's wrong though. Sam is long and lanky and has dark brown hair and Aurie would kill him if he tried to grow a mustache.

See? That's wrong. One of those is wrong.

* * *

Put it under a cup, three other cups, keep your eye on the right one. Never let your eyes wander, which one is right, which one is true? What happened? What _really_ happened?

Pick a cup.

Go on. Pick the right one.

* * *

"You know why you're here?"

"Is that existential?"

"We're trying to help you."

"That's…disturbingly vague."

* * *

Some things are consistent.

Bones is the only doctor he trusts.

Spock makes him ache.

His name.

What he does.

That should be enough to live a life on. That should be enough.

* * *

Right?

* * *

He says, "Let me start again."

He says, "I'm better. I know who I am."

He says, "I'll stay."

He lies a lot, and one Spock believes him and one doesn't, and some days they're interchangeable and some days they're distinct, and some days he thinks he's going insane, because he's the same but Spock is different, changing, moving on and leaving Jim, left Jim, fucking-- fucking tenses.

Some days he remembers fucking against a wall, on the console.

Some days he remembers dying and wishing just once he'd kissed him.

It's hard to say what's real.

* * *

Difficult to say, not knowing.

* * *

Sometimes he's not sure he's still here. Pricks his skin with needles or sharp edges, and the sting of it is familiar, that tearing of flesh, but the pain is real, so he must be too.

He remembers everything.

That's the problem.

* * *

Too fast to live, too young to die, bye-bye

* * *

_Live fast, die young, and have a beautiful looking corpse_

He does. Will. Didn't.

* * *

Consciousness is the tyranny before the dirt.

Bye-bye.

**Author's Note:**

> so this was an experimental riff on what if that fanon meld that gave Jim insight into the prime!verse actually fucked him right up. yeah. idk either, dudes.


End file.
